Child Care Experiences Among Dual Language Learners in the United States: Analyses of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Birth Cohort

This article uses nationally representative data from the Early Chlidhood Longitudinal Study--Birth Cohort used to examine child care experiences with repreated cross-sectional analysis at 9, 24, and 52 months for dual language learner and non-dual language learner children

Phase diagram of the Holstein polaron in one dimension

The behavior of the 1D Holstein polaron is described, with emphasis on lattice coarsening effects, by distinguishing between adiabatic and nonadiabatic contributions to the local correlations and dispersion properties. The original and unifying systematization of the crossovers between the different polaron behaviors, usually considered in the literature, is obtained in terms of quantum to classical, weak coupling to strong coupling, adiabatic to nonadiabatic, itinerant to self-trapped polarons and large to small polarons. It is argued that the relationship between various aspects of polaron states can be specified by five regimes: the weak-coupling regime, the regime of large adiabatic polarons, the regime of small adiabatic polarons, the regime of small nonadiabatic (Lang-Firsov) polarons, and the transitory regime of small pinned polarons for which the adiabatic and nonadiabatic contributions are inextricably mixed in the polaron dispersion properties. The crossovers between these five regimes are positioned in the parameter space of the Holstein Hamiltonian.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figure

On the self-trapping problem of electrons or excitons in one dimension

We present a detailed numerical study of the one-dimensional Holstein model with a view to understanding the self-trapping process of electrons or excitons in crystals with short-range particle-lattice interactions. Applying a very efficient variational Lanczos method, we are able to analyze the ground-state properties of the system in the weak-- and strong-coupling, adiabatic and non-adiabatic regimes on lattices large enough to eliminate finite-size effects. In particular, we obtain the complete phase diagram and comment on the existence of a critical length for self-trapping in spatially restricted one-dimensional systems. In order to characterize large and small polaron states we calculate self-consistently the lattice distortions and the particle-phonon correlation functions. In the strong-coupling case, two distinct types of small polaron states are shown to be possible according to the relative importance of static displacement field and dynamic polaron effects. Special emphasis is on the intermediate coupling regime, which we also study by means of direct diagonalization preserving the full dynamics and quantum nature of phonons. The crossover from large to small polarons shows up in a strong decrease of the kinetic energy accompanied by a substantial change in the optical absorption spectra. We show that our numerical results in all important limiting cases reveal an excellent agreement with both analytical perturbation theory predictions and very recent density matrix renormalization group data.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev.

Coordinated Activation of Candidate Proto-Oncogenes and Cancer Testes Antigens via Promoter Demethylation in Head and Neck Cancer and Lung Cancer

Background: Epigenetic alterations have been implicated in the pathogenesis of solid tumors, however, proto-oncogenes activated by promoter demethylation have been sporadically reported. We used an integrative method to analyze expression in primary head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and pharmacologically demethylated cell lines to identify aberrantly demethylated and expressed candidate proto-oncogenes and cancer testes antigens in HNSCC. Methodology/Principal Findings: We noted coordinated promoter demethylation and simultaneous transcriptional upregulation of proto-oncogene candidates with promoter homology, and phylogenetic footprinting of these promoters demonstrated potential recognition sites for the transcription factor BORIS. Aberrant BORIS expression correlated with upregulation of candidate proto-oncogenes in multiple human malignancies including primary non-small cell lung cancers and HNSCC, induced coordinated proto-oncogene specific promoter demethylation and expression in non-tumorigenic cells, and transformed NIH3T3 cells. Conclusions/Significance: Coordinated, epigenetic unmasking of multiple genes with growth promoting activity occurs i

Classical Simulation of Relativistic Quantum Mechanics in Periodic Optical Structures

Spatial and/or temporal propagation of light waves in periodic optical structures offers a rather unique possibility to realize in a purely classical setting the optical analogues of a wide variety of quantum phenomena rooted in relativistic wave equations. In this work a brief overview of a few optical analogues of relativistic quantum phenomena, based on either spatial light transport in engineered photonic lattices or on temporal pulse propagation in Bragg grating structures, is presented. Examples include spatial and temporal photonic analogues of the Zitterbewegung of a relativistic electron, Klein tunneling, vacuum decay and pair-production, the Dirac oscillator, the relativistic Kronig-Penney model, and optical realizations of non-Hermitian extensions of relativistic wave equations.Comment: review article (invited), 14 pages, 7 figures, 105 reference

PaLM 2 Technical Report

We introduce PaLM 2, a new state-of-the-art language model that has better multilingual and reasoning capabilities and is more compute-efficient than its predecessor PaLM. PaLM 2 is a Transformer-based model trained using a mixture of objectives. Through extensive evaluations on English and multilingual language, and reasoning tasks, we demonstrate that PaLM 2 has significantly improved quality on downstream tasks across different model sizes, while simultaneously exhibiting faster and more efficient inference compared to PaLM. This improved efficiency enables broader deployment while also allowing the model to respond faster, for a more natural pace of interaction. PaLM 2 demonstrates robust reasoning capabilities exemplified by large improvements over PaLM on BIG-Bench and other reasoning tasks. PaLM 2 exhibits stable performance on a suite of responsible AI evaluations, and enables inference-time control over toxicity without additional overhead or impact on other capabilities. Overall, PaLM 2 achieves state-of-the-art performance across a diverse set of tasks and capabilities. When discussing the PaLM 2 family, it is important to distinguish between pre-trained models (of various sizes), fine-tuned variants of these models, and the user-facing products that use these models. In particular, user-facing products typically include additional pre- and post-processing steps. Additionally, the underlying models may evolve over time. Therefore, one should not expect the performance of user-facing products to exactly match the results reported in this report

Dijet production in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with large rapidity gaps at the ATLAS experiment

A 6.8 nb−¹ sample of pp collision data collected under low-luminosity conditions at √s = 7 TeV by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is used to study diffractive dijet production. Events containing at least two jets with pT > 20 GeV are selected and analysed in terms of variables which discriminate between diffractive and non-diffractive processes. Cross sections are measured differentially in ΔηF, the size of the observable forward region of pseudorapidity which is devoid of hadronic activity, and in an estimator, ξ˜, of the fractional momentum loss of the proton assuming single diffractive dissociation (pp → p X). Model comparisons indicate a dominant non-diffractive contribution up to moderately large ηF and small ξ˜, with a diffractive contribution which is significant at the highest ΔηF and the lowest ξ˜. The rapidity-gap survival probability is estimated from comparisons of the data in this latter region with predictions based on diffractive parton distribution functions

Perspectives on the use of transcriptomics to advance biofuels

As a field within the energy research sector, bioenergy is continuously expanding. Although much has been achieved and the yields of both ethanol and butanol have been improved, many avenues of research to further increase these yields still remain. This review covers current research related with transcriptomics and the application of this high-throughput analytical tool to engineer both microbes and plants with the penultimate goal being better biofuel production and yields. The initial focus is given to the responses of fermentative microbes during the fermentative production of acids, such as butyric acid, and solvents, including ethanol and butanol. As plants offer the greatest natural renewable source of fermentable sugars within the form of lignocellulose, the second focus area is the transcriptional responses of microbes when exposed to plant hydrolysates and lignin-related compounds. This is of particular importance as the acid/base hydrolysis methods commonly employed to make the plant-based cellulose available for enzymatic hydrolysis to sugars also generates significant amounts of lignin-derivatives that are inhibitory to fermentative bacteria and microbes. The article then transitions to transcriptional analyses of lignin-degrading organisms, such as Phanerochaete chrysosporium, as an alternative to acid/base hydrolysis. The final portion of this article will discuss recent transcriptome analyses of plants and, in particular, the genes involved in lignin production. The rationale behind these studies is to eventually reduce the lignin content present within these plants and, consequently, the amount of inhibitors generated during the acid/base hydrolysis of the lignocelluloses. All four of these topics represent key areas where transcriptomic research is currently being conducted to identify microbial genes and their responses to products and inhibitors as well as those related with lignin degradation/formation.clos